My mom thinks that dating is obsolete for me and my fellow Millennials. And she’s kind of right.

I’ve said it before; in high school, no one really “dated.” For us City kids, “dating” — for anyone under 18, at least — was a thing of the suburbs and teen comedies from the 80s. I don’t know if we were too immature for it, or if we were so painfully insecure that we convinced ourselves we had neither the time nor the patience it required, but whatever the case, we weren’t interested. To be honest, though, not much has changed in college. It seems that most people are determined to keeping “hooking up,” “hanging out,” and “doing whatever” until someday — magically and entirely without effort — that person worthy of a relationship label not so infuriatingly vague as the one borne by all those who preceded him/her comes along. Do I think it’s bizarre? Yes. Do I think we have the various screens that often stand between us and genuine, healthy social interaction to blame — if only partially — for this odd non-dating culture? Duh. We’re all scared shitless of each other — of what we see when we look at one another and, more importantly, maybe, of how much we care. Dating is far too concrete, you see, for a generation of guys and gals that would prefer to keep things as flexible as our Twitter handles. And I’m over it. Really, I was never under it (although I’ve pretended to be virtually all throughout my first two years of college, because, you know, I’m an almost too-chill girl who has no interest WHATSOEVER in a relationship! Fucking obviously!). So, when my best friend told me her older brother’s best friend (cute, right?) was interested in asking me out, I told her I was down.

I should preface this short (but important) story by saying that, in high school, her older brother and his friends were wonderful things of intrigue to us. They smoked weed and listened to music without lyrics before we realized that neither of those activities were particularly cool or unusual…so, yeah; to us, they were the shit. And I knew about this particular friend of her older brother because we happened lived in the same building for half of high school.

Even though I knew it was coming, I was kind of shocked when he asked me out. It just seemed so old skool, you know? I’d never met the guy, which made my date with him a blind one. My first real *date.* Blind. When I got to Le Bain — YES, that’s right, my first real date was BLIND AND AT A EUROTRASH CLUB IN THE MEATPACKING DISTRICT — I had no idea what the fuck I was doing there. I was nervous as hell, and I don’t get nervous.

Okay, so we’re sitting there, only sliiiiightly awkwardly chatting and laughing, and all of the sudden, Luke says:

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I came to ask you out?”

“Well… no, I wasn’t going to, but now that you mention it…”

Turns out, back when we shared an address, Luke came across one of these tutoring flyers — complete with what I’m sure was a horrendously embarrassing photo — that my mom had made me put all over the building. He pointed it out to Matt (Best Friend’s Older Brother), and told him that he thought I was cute. Of course, Matt happened to know that lovely wannabe English tutor (P.S. I never got a job). This was back in his senior year (my sophomore year). Apparently, since 2010, Luke’s been asking Matt to set the two of us up. For the record, he didn’t; poor guy had to shoot me a Facebook message like some sort of internet predator just to get a date.

We’ve gone on one more date since. I don’t think it’s going anywhere, but it makes for a decent story, right?

Oh, and if you’re reading this mom, NONE OF THIS EVER HAPPENED. Just some stupid shit I made up. Your flyers were a terrible idea that definitely DID NOT lead to a date. Also, yes, I will be home for dinner, and I’m craving sushi.